Peter Chilson, professor of English at WSU, assisted the Ontario, Oregon, school district as a writer-in-residence during the 2018 Summer Seminar—a four-week-long summer school program molded around providing migrant students with extra writing assistance as they step into the future.
The hope is that the students will use the time this summer to craft a personal story that can be used to apply for scholarship essays and job applications.
Chilson helped migrant students improve their writing, specifically on developing characters and their own voice in the prose they write, “So that they can share their experiences with an audience that is important to them.”
“Their stories are about journeys. They’ve been through some intense experiences,” he said.
Researchers in Washington are studying a fish that nests under rocks and sings at night to attract its mates. They say the ears of these singing fish could teach us how to improve our own hearing.
You know that expression, “Leave no stone unturned?”
Coffin
That’s how Washington State University neuroscientist Allison Coffin goes about catching midshipman fish—at least during mating season.
Standing on the rocky, oyster-covered shoreline of Hood Canal, she rolled over a beach-ball sized rock to reveal a small pool of water just barely covering two fish.
“Oh yeah! Another female,” she said. “And then there’s the male right there.”
Because it’s low tide, some of the fish she and her research partner Joe Sisneros uncovered aren’t in any water at all.
That makes this area prime fishing grounds for the researchers, who say the ears of these fish could teach us how to improve our own hearing.
WSU fine arts alumnus Iris Scott, 34, makes her living finger painting. That might sound like nice work if someone else is paying your bills, but the Brooklyn artist—known for her impressionistic paintings of the natural world in psychedelic colors—is fully self-supporting. She broke $500,000 in revenue last year and will exceed $1 million this year, she says.
Thanks to her artistic talent, entrepreneurial spirit and creative use of social media to market her work, Scott is among a fast-growing group of self-employed professionals who are building annual revenue in solo businesses and partnerships to $ 1 million or more. The number of nonemployer firms—meaning those staffed only by the owners—that generate $1 million to $2.49 million in revenue rose to 36,161 in 2016, up 1.6 percent from 35,584 in 2015, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That number is up 35.2% from 26,744 in 2011.
Scott
It’s not easy to make a great living off of creative work. So how has Scott managed to make a great living from her art while creating work that has gotten her represented in galleries and covered in publications such as American Art Collector?
She has designed her career on her own terms by putting in the time and effort make the most of her talents on a daily basis, assessing and acting upon the opportunities in front of her in real-time, having the courage to ditch the unwritten rules of the art world and its gatekeepers when they didn’t make sense to her, developing ongoing, two-way communication with her customers—and responding to followers’ suggestions. Here is some detail on the strategies she used, which will be relevant to owners of many types of ultra-lean businesses.
Salmon in the northwestern continental United States often carry a fluke containing bacteria that can produce a deadly disease in bears called salmon poisoning disease (SPD). Current recovery plans for grizzly bears in the North Cascades of Washington and the mountains of central Idaho, where infected salmon currently occur, call for using bears from several interior populations; however, a new study reveals that such bears with no history of salmon consumption are likely sensitive to SPD.
The Journal of Wildlife Management findings indicate that identifying a source of bears that would be resistant to SPD may be difficult.
Robbins
“We are hopeful that the bears used in the initial restoration effort will feed exclusively on terrestrial-based foods as there are currently very few salmon returning to the North Cascades; however, any bear that moves into lower elevation areas where they might consume salmon will be closely monitored,” said lead author Dr. Charles Robbins, professor of environmental studies at Washington State University. “If they eat salmon containing the bacteria, we suspect they will get sick. We are hopeful that they will be able to recover.”
WSU professor shows Hubble Space Telescope’s greatest images, details history
About 50 people tilted their heads back, gazed up at the Washington State University Planetarium dome and took in images from space Sunday at Sloan Hall on the WSU campus in Pullman.
Long before Sunday’s sunset, viewers sat in the dark room looking up at sharply-focused images of planets, stars and galaxies. One image showed a detailed shot of a purple ring at the top and bottom of Jupiter.
Guy Worthey
Guy Worthey, WSU associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, displayed the images taken from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Worthey discussed the history of the telescope, named after the late American astronomer Edwin Hubble, and how it revolutionized astronomy.
He said American physicist Lyman Spitzer developed the idea in 1946 of a telescope beyond the atmosphere rather than on the ground, as turbulence and air currents make telescope views from the ground blurry.
“If you were to go above the atmosphere, you could defeat that completely,” Worthey said.
